Here comes Snoopgate

Brendan Nyhan quotes an item by Jonathan Alter that is making the rounds in the blogsphere today. It reveals that President Bush made a last-ditch effort to quash the illegal spying story. Alter writes:

Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

Nyhan says this is "right on," and speculates about how much effect politics had on preventing the Times from running the story. Supposedly they were told it was a threat to national security.

Putting aside what I've been saying about why, why, why would anyone believe Bush has credibility on that or any issue, Nyhan writes:

...there's no reason to think that the Times couldn't have rewritten the story in a manner that would have protected American intelligence capabilities a year ago. Isn't it possible that the Times held off partly for political reasons? A year ago, President Bush had just been re-elected in large part due to his claims that he would do a better job of protecting the country from terrorism. Times journalists who fear accusations of media bias might have hesitated to release such an explosive story at that time. But with President Bush increasingly unpopular and under fire from liberals and conservatives alike, the Times overcame its doubts and decided put the story out.

He goes on to get into something that's been worrying me for over a month now. Yeah, all of a sudden the press seems to have realized that all the things that people who were paying attention have been telling them for years about Bush are true. But it's not because they've suddenly rediscovered their inner Edward R. Murrows and Walter Cronkites. It's because now, Bush is safe to attack.

Nyhan:

This is part of a larger story I hope to tell in my dissertation about how presidential scandals are driven in large part by approval ratings. Media outlets and politicians appear to time their rhetoric for maximum impact. And in this case, the environment for creating a scandal is far more favorable today than it was a year ago. Similarly, Democratic criticism of the program is far more harsh than it would have been as recently as 2004 -- and that's because they don't fear the repercussions of questioning Bush's anti-terror policies nearly as much as they once did.

Democrats have a tendency to rush from savior to savior (I'm not always immune). When we look around for who deserves our support, we may much admire those who are capable of saying "I was wrong."

But we should never overlook the people who can say "I was right."